iSpot.tv Adds Attribution to TV Ad Measurement

Data company iSpot.tv, which provides advertising impression metrics, is introducing a new product that connects those impressions to sales results.

iSpot.tv is able to measure the impact of TV advertising on digital activity by looking at viewing on 10 million smart TVs and matching that with web visits, digital registrations and online purchases on a household level.

The new product will be promoted in an ad that will run on CNBC and online that takes a poke at Nielsen. It shows how quickly iSpot.tv can provide campaign performance metrics and uses the tagline “We don’t make the ads. We just measure them.”

About 20 of the company’s advertiser clients have been testing the new product over the past six months, and 30 are already signed up, according to iSpot.tv CEO Sean Muller.

“What makes this really powerful is what we’ve done is we’ve deployed our digital tracking pixel, which now runs across dozens of clients including some of the largest sites on the web—we’re talking about insurance carriers, wireless carriers, automakers, large commerce sites,” Muller said. “So we’ve had this running in a large scale way for a period of time now. This is a fully baked product here.”

Most advertisers look at the effectiveness of their media using media mix models. Muller says those models look at the big picture, comparing the returns on investment of an entire media, such as TV, as a whole.

With iSpot.tv’s new product, clients are able to take a look at the impact of specific networks, programming genres and individual creative executions.

For one client, Experian, iSpot.tv was able to see what effect TV commercials had towards getting people to sign up for its credit monitoring service.

Experian’s campaign ran from January through the end of February. Because it had its product on Experian’s website and app, iSpot.tv was able to measure each interaction with people who saw the company’s ads. It found that the ads had a conversion rate of 0.8%, getting people to sign up within a 14-day window.

Some networks worked harder for Experian than others. CNN had a conversion rate of 1.05%, A&E’s rate was 0.98%, AMC was 0.73% and Fox News was 0.65%.

The product also helps advertisers determine the optimal frequency, or how many times a target viewer needs to see an ad before he’s likely to sign up.

iSpot.tv’s data is done at real time and the attribution model is similar to ones most marketers already use for digital media, Muller says.

While its attribution product now measures only digital conversions, iSpot.tv is working on ways to measure off line sales activity.

Muller expects most of iSpot.tv’s clients to sign up for the added service. For new clients, it will be bundled into iSpot.tv’s offering.